New Blog

For your convenience and reading pleasure, there is now a new, combined blog for Caleb and Esther. Check it out at littlelowes.blogspot.com

Caleb is now a big brother!

In case for whatever reason you didn't know, Caleb's little sister, Esther Mae, was born Sunday morning! She has her own blog (linked on the right sidebar) at lowenumber2.blogspot.com.

Caleb had an exciting couple of days as he woke up Sunday to one of Elisha's co-workers at our house and spent the morning playing with his family. By lunch, Elisha's parents had arrived in town, much to his excitement. He has been constantly asking for "buhpa" which means grandpa (but he has also used it for my dad which we call grandad). There is a very slight variation on buhpa which means grandma, but it is quite subtle. Anyway, he picked them out of a crowd driving up to the airport!

His grandparents brought him to visit us in the hospital on Sunday afternoon and he was very glad to see us. At first he showed pretty much zero interest in Esther and was just getting into the normal troube around the hospital room. However, after we tried to get him to say Esther, he came up with this:

Once he got it, he wouldn't stop saying it! I think it sounds like either "Edgar" or "uga". I choose to think it's "Edgar", for obvious reasons, so that's what I'll be telling Esther later in life. :-)

On Monday he visited again. Apparently when he was coming up to the hospital he kept saying Mommy! Daddy! He showed a little more interest in Esther this time, pointing and smiling a couple of times and wanting to look closely once or twice. He stayed for quite a while and wore them both out:


One last thing: we've heard some people say that the older child just knows when the baby is about to come and they get really clingy. That was the case for Caleb! Thursday and Friday he was continually wanting hugs from Elisha, which is pretty unusual for him. These days you're lucky to get a good 3 second hug before bed! But he had to get about 10 hugs before we left him at daycare, and he would start crying and want another when he realized we were walking out the door.

Elisha's mom will be staying to help out probably at least till the weekend, so I'm sure Caleb will have lots more fun interactions with Esther. Not to mention adventures all of his own...

Halloween

We dressed Caleb up as a hunter and took him out trick-or-treating. He had a blast! He did very well too. We didn't really expect him to actually wear the hat or carry the gun or the bag of candy, but he did a good job with all of it. We only took him to about 4 or 5 houses, but he really had a good time. Here are some pictures and a video to enjoy.

Haircut!!!

We finally decided to attempt to cut Caleb's hair this morning. It was definitely in need of it. Here are some new pictures...
And here's a video of one of his new favorite toys:

Great-Grandparents Visit

Here are some cute pictures and video from when Great-Grandpa and Great-Grandma Waugh came to visit.

Naptime

Here is a funny picture of Caleb napping today. He has fallen in love with my old big stuffed tiger and he wanted to sleep with it this afternoon.

Recent Caleb Happenings

I thought it was about time to put some new pictures and videos here and to mention what Caleb has been up to recently. One of the most interesting things is that we finally decided that we should try to count how many words he has. So we took a few days and just wrote down all the words he said, so it's not a complete list, but it's a good sampling. We ended up with at least 75 words, which I guess isn't very useful information because I have no clue how many he should have at this point. But I must admit I was pretty surprised. If I had to just guess I probably would have said around 30. I had no idea it was over double that! He's getting to the point now that he's probably adding about 2 words a day to his vocabulary. He repeats just about anything you say. It's fun because we have actually gotten him to say "I love you" now! It comes out sounding a bit like "hello" but he's trying really hard. I'm just waiting for it to come out spontaneously one day instead of after we ask him to say it, but it still melts my heart even though it's prompted.

Well, as promised, here are some pictures and stuff:

I thought this one was cute even though it's probably a month old

Okay, I couldn't resist...this is me meeting Dan Haseltine. :)

Caleb...our future rock star!

This is from one Saturday while I was gone
for work. Apparently he first fell asleep with
his hand actually in the soup.



This is a cute video of him building a tower.

That ought to be enough stuff to make up for the lack of posts recently. :)

Ice Cream

We took Caleb to Chic-fil-A last night for dinner, and he ate his dinner very well, so we got him an ice cream cone. He was so cute. He held it really well, and did a good job eating it without making a huge mess. He even shared bites with us very willingly.

Oh, and this morning at breakfast, he finished his food and wanted a bite of Jonathan's food. So I told him if he asked nicely, Daddy might share with him. So he reached out his hands and said "pweese" with such a cute little face that Jonathan just melted and gave him a bite or two.

Cincinnati Chili

Here is Caleb enjoying himself at the table with some Cincinnati Chili...

wishing i had a video camera in the car

Caleb did this hilarious thing in the car on the way home from day care yesterday, and I wished I had a video camera because he was cracking me up. I'm not sure I'll be able to convey the story written as well as it would be if I were telling it out loud, but I'll try.

So Caleb has this maraca that counts and says the colors of the rainbow and stuff in both English and Spanish. He had it in the car and turned it on, and it was saying the colors in Spanish. He was shaking it for awhile and grinning and having fun, then I guess he got bored with it and dropped it on the floor. It was still going, so the whole rest of the ride home, we heard "rojo...naranja...amarillo..." etc. Well, after a few times through, whenever it would say "naranja" Caleb would say "ba blah blah" with the same intonation as the toy. Then he started laughing and just going "bluh bluh bluh bluh" you know, like sticking his tongue out and saying nonsense stuff. It was SO funny! I guess he was trying to say that Spanish just sounds like nonsense to him!

Anyway, I was laughing so hard and he just kept on doing it the whole way home. He's so funny sometimes. It's good to know he has a sense of humor. :)

Great Aunt Barb Visits

Here are some cute pictures from when my Dad's sister, Barb, came from Texas to visit us over the weekend. We had a good time and we're really glad she could come to hang out with us.

Here they are playing with Mr. Potato Head:


And here's Barb with Caleb and his cousin Kathryn when we drove up to see Eric and Jennifer's house:

The Promised Video

Here it is, the video we captured of Caleb telling us the story of how he broke my cow pepper shaker. This video is mostly me prompting him to tell it, but just prior to the camera coming out, he had told in detail to Jonathan the entire story. Of course it went much like this:
...incoherent babble..."cow" (pointing at the cow)
...blah blah.."boom, crash" (waving hand on the floor)
...babble..."trash" (pointing at the trash can)
...more babble..."truck" (pointing outside at the curb)

Hopefully you can get the idea from the video. It was much cuter the first time but we weren't quick enough to catch it on video. Still, I'm pretty impressed that he remembered the incident so well like a week later.

18 months

Caleb had his 18 month checkup yesterday. He is now 25 lbs 6 oz and 35 in! He's still about 50th percentile for weight and consistently in the 90s for height. I guess he's going to be a tall kid. Maybe that will serve him well since he'll probably be among the younger of the kids in his class.

We'll have to post a video we took the other day of him retelling to us the story of him breaking something. It's quite cute. Check back later.

Pictures

Here are a couple of Caleb photos from the past few weeks. Enjoy!

Here's how I found him napping one day.


Here he is in his shirt I got him in Hawaii with his ukulele that his Grandma Waugh bought him there.

Caleb and Kathryn

Here is a picture of Caleb holding his new cousin Kathryn.

Separation Anxiety

Poor Caleb has been having a rough time since I got back from Hawaii. Every time I hold him, he has a death-grip hug on me and he cries or follows me whenever I leave the room. He is especially having a really hard time going to sleep. I hope he can get over it soon. Not that I mind so much him being clingy. It's kind of nice to get good hugs from him. I'm just glad he's not mad at me for being gone so long.

Caleb has really started doing well with pooping in the potty. A couple of times he has even taken off running for the potty on his own without us even asking if he needs to go. He gets a popsicle as a reward whenever he actually makes it to the potty and really uses it. We're going to be running out of popsicles before long. :)

Within the next couple of weeks, we're hoping to move Caleb to his new bed in his new bedroom. We'll be repainting his current room for the baby. I'm sure it's going to be a challenge keeping him in the bed, but we'll see how it goes.

We'll be sure to document it with pictures and post them here.

Caleb Growing Up

I guess I never posted an update saying that Caleb got better. The antibiotics seemed to really help a lot. He was about 95% better after just about a day on the medicine. So I'm guessing that he really did have a bit of pneumonia and not just a virus.

Here are some cute new things he's done recently. A week or so ago, he got in trouble for continuing to touch something I had repeatedly asked him not to touch. Well, he started crying and then he gave me a big hug and said something that sounded a lot like "I sorry" then he went over and did the same thing to Jonathan. Of course he was immediately forgiven. :)

A couple of nights ago, Caleb was grunting and Jonathan asked him if he needed to go poopoo in the potty. We've started doing this recently and Caleb usually runs to the bathroom, but so far it has always been too late. Well, this time, there was nothing in the diaper yet, so Jonathan sat him on the potty and he actually went! Jonathan told him that he was a big boy to go poopoo in the potty and that he would get a popsicle for doing it.

Caleb has also started carrying his own diaper bag out to the car in the morning. It's so cute. He drags it behind him with a big grin and he puts it on the seat next to his car seat. He's such a good helper!

I can't get over how fast he learns new things. It's constant, and usually very entertaining!

Hospital Visit

Yesterday Caleb laid down for a nap about his normal time of 9:30 or 10 and he would normally sleep for about an hour. Well, around 12:30, we finally woke Caleb up and he had a fever of 102.1 so we gave him some Tylenol, blamed it on his teething, and he seemed to be a little better. Around 4 we laid him down for another nap because he was obviously very tired again. I went in to check on him around 5 and he was burning up. His fever was up to 104.1 so we got him up and tried to figure out what to do. He seemed very twitchy and shaky and was also having a lot of trouble breathing...very shallow breaths and brief periods where it seemed like he held his breath for awhile. So we called the doctor's office answering system and then waited for a call back. Shortly after that, he had a minor episode where it appeared that he stopped breathing for maybe 30 seconds. Being scared after his similar seizure episode a few months ago, we picked up and took him to the ER. They gave him Motrin when we got there, then when we finally saw a doctor a couple hours later, she did a strep throat culture and a chest x-ray. His fever was still at 103.8 so they gave him more Tylenol and after awhile he was starting to feel a lot better. The strep was negative, but the chest x-ray showed a little bit of haziness that the doctor thought looked like the first stages of pneumonia, so they started him on an antibiotic and told us to continue alternating Motrin and Tylenol every three hours for the next 24 hours to keep the fever under control. By the time we left the hospital, it was down to 101, and as of this morning, it is holding steady at 100. We're praying that he will get over this quickly and start feeling better soon. It's sad because he wants to be his normal, rambunctious self, but he really needs to rest and he screamed when I laid him down for a nap, but he was practically asleep by the time I walked out of his room and got 30 seconds away. We appreciate your prayers for him.

More Caleb Entertainment

Here's a picture of Caleb on his new toy that Grandma bought him while she was watching him for the week Jonathan and I were on vacation.





And here's a video from last night...what the boys do when Mommy goes out to a Pampered Chef party!

Pictures

I thought a couple of pictures would make this blog more interesting...

Welcome to Caleb's World

Now I've started a blog for Caleb! This should be interesting if I actually keep up with it. There are always plenty of cute pictures of him, so there should be at least no lack of that. We'll see how it goes...